What is native advertising and how does it work

17.05.2018 | 11:31:00 | Tomas Forsbäck

Native advertising has gained popularity in the past five years. Its easy purchase process, optimisation and targeting have also advanced to top level.
The basic idea behind native advertising is that readers of media websites are interested in good content, not advertising itself. That is why advertisers would rather offer visitors useful content than direct advertising. This is called native advertising.

What is native advertising?

Native advertising is featured content in the media news stream, and it is perceived as part of a good reading experience. Research shows that native ads are much more effective than other advertising within media. They are also not found to be irritating, as is sometimes the case with banners or rich media solutions. This is because readers perceive that the good content in a native ad is serving them.

According to a study conducted by Yahoo, up to 93% of visitors take notice of native advertising at least at title level. The CTR, that is, the click-through rate, is also many times higher than with traditional banner advertising.

How does it work?

In Finland, native advertising is increasing rapidly. With Readpeak’s content sharing service, you can have your content appear in more than 40 Finnish quality media. You can do this yourself, without intermediaries.

In native advertising, the company’s content, such as a blog or an article, is featured as part of the media news site. The featured content includes an image, a title, an introductory paragraph and the company’s name. The content is tagged with the word “ad”, whereby readers also understand that this is commercial content.

When readers become interested and click on the featured content on the media news site, they are redirected to the company’s blog or article page. The company pays for the service only after the reader has been redirected to the content. The company does not pay just for the fact that the featured content appears in media, but for genuinely interested readers.